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Adelle Blackett, McGill’s Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development, gave the Annual Cook-Gray Lecture on Oct. 15, 2020.

Global Social Protections Needed: Cook-Gray Lecturer

Who protects the 67 million domestic workers who clean, cook, care for children and often provide the emotional labor that holds households together?

An International Labor Organization standard created in 2011 to protect domestic workers has encouraged incremental change in some corners of the globe, said McGill University Professor Adelle Blackett, speaking via Zoom at ILR’s annual Cook-Gray Lecture Oct. 15.

“There’s change. It’s slow. It’s deeply imperfect,” said Blackett, who served as the ILO’s lead expert in establishing decent work standards for domestic workers worldwide. Convention No. 189, as it is known, was the first transnational protocol for the millions of workers, most of them women, who labor invisibly in other people’s homes. 

In Canada, for instance, household workers can, in theory, choose where they live – rather than being required by law to live in their employer’s residence. In the Gulf states, payment mechanisms have been standardized in ways that make it possible for third parties to verify workers have been paid.

Even in some countries that didn’t ratify the ILO standard, progress has been made, she said.

Yet, Blackett said, “There is so much that needs to be done. How you actually make working conditions decent for domestic workers is a huge task and will require much comparative insight, sharing, commitment and each country has a lot to learn.” 

Some advocates and workers, she said, are pushing for global social protections for domestic workers, who were historically excluded from basic labor laws. 

 “To have some control, to work in community and to challenge isolation, this is a moment for creativity and for regulatory experimentation,” Blackett said. “There’s movement on thinking through the cooperative model for domestic workers. It’s encouraging.”

Blackett was referring to the example of a network of worker-owned cooperatives in New York City, where domestic workers have improved their working conditions by forming worker-owned cooperatives and negotiating collectively with employers. 

COVID-19, though, has stalled innovation.

“In a moment like this, attentions turn elsewhere,” said Blackett, noting that 55 million domestic workers are unemployed due to the pandemic and struggling to survive.

When a lecture attendee asked Blackett how individuals can support reform, the professor was emphatic. “Vote. Vote. Vote. The rest of the world thanks you. Vote.”

Blackett, McGill’s Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development, teaches and conducts research in the areas of labor and employment law, trade regulation, law and development, critical race theory and slavery and the law. She is the author of the 2019 Cornell University Press book “Everyday Transgressions: Domestic Workers’ Transnational Challenge to International Labor Law.” 

The ILR annual lecture, named for deceased ILR faculty members Alice Hanson Cook and Lois Spier Gray, is organized by Rosemary Batt, the Alice Hanson Cook Professor of Women and Work, and Pamela Tolbert, the Lois S. Gray Professor of ILR and Social Sciences. 

The event is held to advance the social justice and equality visions of Professors Cook and Gray. This year’s lecture was co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Inequality and the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.

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